Live data from Hacker News

DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

github.com

151–160 of 531 posts

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#151
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view, anyone who trusts ddg is a bit silly - founder has a bad track record on user privacy. Founded Names Database[1], a social media website designed to collect user information as aggressively as possible, before selling all the information to classmates.com. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_Database

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#152
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that even mean? Ten times? Tooling is everything?

When it comes to a browser, I'm curious as well. I often end up with 100+ tabs in firefox before I close them all. I don't think think I'd consider that being a power user, but would a 10x power user simply mean someone with over 1,000 tabs open? I haven't used Chrome regularly in the last year or so, but it would get noticeably slow by the time I had 3-4 windows with 10-20 tabs each. Firefox hasn't really had that i…

I use Firefox day to day, but if I was a “power user” and picking apart web traffic everyday I’d probably use Chromium. The dev tools in it are way better than the ones built in Firefox.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#153
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

A common fallacy I see, though I don't know if there's a name for it, is assuming that just because what someone is doing can be described by the name of a fallacy that what the person is doing is fallacious.

[deleted]

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#154
post #89
post #52

DuckDuckGo staff here. As mentioned in the linked page, the purpose of the request is to retrieve a website's favicon so that it can be displayed in certain places within the app or on the results page. We use an internal favicon service because it can be complicated to locate a favicon for a website. They can be stored in a variety of locations and in a variety of formats. The service understands these edge cases an…

You really can't use "we promise we won't misuse the information" as an argument, that's what everyone says whether it's true or not, and the whole point of using a privacy-centric browser is that as a user you can't trust those kinds of promises.

They’re primarily a search engine, so yes, you definitely have to trust that they won’t misuse information about what search terms you are querying for.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common fallacy I see, though I don't know if there's a name for it, is assuming that just because what someone is doing can be described by the name of a fallacy that what the person is doing is fallacious.

> Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. It is also called argument to logic (argumentum ad logicam), the fallacy fallacy, the fallacist's fallacy, and the bad reasons fallacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_fallacy

I'm talking about situations where no fallacy has actually occurred, not situations where a fallacy has occurred but a correct conclusion has been arrived at anyway.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#156
post #52

DuckDuckGo staff here. As mentioned in the linked page, the purpose of the request is to retrieve a website's favicon so that it can be displayed in certain places within the app or on the results page. We use an internal favicon service because it can be complicated to locate a favicon for a website. They can be stored in a variety of locations and in a variety of formats. The service understands these edge cases an…

What a bizarre potential privacy flaw to introduce for a tiny little icon nobody cares about. I understand it, usability and UX is important - but you guys are DDG! Come on! Your customers all have tinfoil hats!

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really think is an ad hominem fallacy. An ad homihem fallacy is when you attack the person making an argument rather than the argument. But no one here is attacking the people making the argument. The argument is "Trust DDG". That argument is being attacked as "DDG's founder has done bad stuff in the past, it's likely DDG will do bad stuff, so I won't trust it". That seems to be attacking the argument to me,…

I'm fairly sure that "[you are] a bit silly" is the ad hominem attack, not that calling out the founder is an ad hominem attack.

That’s not an ad hominem attack. The comment didn’t say that the person’s argument is wrong because that person is silly. Clearly the comment is saying that the argument itself is silly.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#158

Formerly worked with DuckDuckGo My advice: Install ungoogled-chromium: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium Install these extensions: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/ilGur1132/Smart-HTTPS There is also a Chromium extension that lets you install from Chrome Web Store: https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store Set duckduckgo.com as your default search engine with a blank home page.…

Seems a bit off-topic for the concrete issue.

Advertising your Twitter for the advice of "switch to somewhat well-known browser X, install these very common extensions and use a VPN" is also a bit ... odd.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#159

Formerly worked with DuckDuckGo My advice: Install ungoogled-chromium: https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium Install these extensions: https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock https://github.com/ilGur1132/Smart-HTTPS There is also a Chromium extension that lets you install from Chrome Web Store: https://github.com/NeverDecaf/chromium-web-store Set duckduckgo.com as your default search engine with a blank home page.…

Seems a bit off-topic for the concrete issue. Advertising your Twitter for the advice of "switch to somewhat well-known browser X, install these very common extensions and use a VPN" is also a bit ... odd.

Privacy-focused web browsers; alternative to DDG browser due to this issue among others.

Re: DuckDuckGo browser seemingly sends domains a user visits to DDG servers

#160
post #52

DuckDuckGo staff here. As mentioned in the linked page, the purpose of the request is to retrieve a website's favicon so that it can be displayed in certain places within the app or on the results page. We use an internal favicon service because it can be complicated to locate a favicon for a website. They can be stored in a variety of locations and in a variety of formats. The service understands these edge cases an…

This is obviously an insufficient answer. Why risk your one selling point on such a trivial bit of code?
Post reply on HN